The Whipping Club (4 page)

a Protestant man, born and raised.
             
“And?” Mr. Hinckley said, a squint in his heavy-lidded eyes.
             
“That’s all,” Jo said, but Marian suspected she was fibbing. She’d only called them ugly proddies this time, perhaps. (Last time she’d confessed to saying they had pooly coming out of their mouths. She’d kicked Jimmy three times, too, with her Mary Janes, though only after he had thrown dirt at her and told her slimy Jews killed the Lord.)
             
“Are you sure that’s all?” Ben asked.
             
Johanna nodded.
             
“Ah, you owe Mr. Hinckley here, and those children, an apology,” Ben said.
             
“I don’t see Jimmy Barker or the others in here,” Marian said.
             
“Jimmy Barker and Libby Higgins have been duly reprimanded, Mrs. Ellis,” Hinckley said. “They’ve already been picked up by their parents.”
             
“Let’s not have any more incidents with the pointer, shall we?” Marian said.
             
“Mrs. Ellis,” Hinckley said, uncrossing his hands. “This is an open, well sought-after school.”
             
“Come on, Marian,” Ben said, taking her by the arm. “It’s not worth it,” he whispered. “What do you say, Johanna?”
             
“I’m sorry. Thank you for teaching me the right way, Mr. Hinckley.” Marian squeezed Jo’s waist and led her down the hall.
             
“Why did you interrupt me?” Marian scolded Ben as they stepped out into the sun.
             
“You have to know when to pick your battles,” he said.
             
“Sometimes you have to give someone like him a taste of his own medicine, Ben. You have to fight when it comes to your kids. Do you not feel it in your blood?”
             
Johanna walked out in front of them, managing to buckle her leather satchel as she looked back at the school building.
             
“Hold up, Jo,” Ben called, and Johanna stopped.
             
“What really happened today?” he asked when he and Marian caught up.
             
“Da, today my teacher asked me if I was Jewish.”
             
Ben looked at Marian. They had prepared their answer long ago. “I’m Jewish. Ma is Catholic. And people say you are what your mother is, so you’re Catholic. Technically. If someone asks. But really you’re a blend of me and your ma.”
             
“There’s another Jewish kid in my class. And her sister’s a sixth year,” Jo announced.
             
“What’s their last name?” Ben asked.
             
“I don’t know. I think her name is Hedda Bernstein.”
             
“There are a few Jewish families in Donnybrook. We should invite them over,” Ben suggested. Marian gave him a vague nod. Both of them knew full well any invitation would likely be refused.
             
“Stay on the pavement,” Marian called as Johanna skipped ahead.
             
Their daughter had the agility of a much older girl but only average maturity, and the combination was troublesome. “Sure, she’s quick as a whip,” Ben recently bragged while they played in the expanse of their front yard. “Can throw the ball, and’ll be coming with Da to the tennis courts soon.”
             
Marian sighed. The start of another afternoon, shaky from Jo’s mischief. But she reminded herself the Convent school would have given Jo a licking she’d remember.
             
Ben kissed her cheek, took her gloved hand. The air was gentle this April. It was warm and lovely walking along Mount Eden Road, the cherry blossoms in bloom, and the soft wind on their faces.
             
“I also told Libby that she’s fat, even though she’s a rail,” Jo called out.
             
“You did?” Ben said, a perturbed surprise in his voice.
             
“Gran told me Protestants don’t eat as good as Catholics, ’cause they’re stingy.”
             
“Well, Gran is wrong,” Marian said, thinking about her mother, always venting in one way or another against Marian’s marriage to Ben.
             
“Our little Johanna has a lot of
chutzpah
,” Marian said.
             
“Sure, she’s got chutzpah from you,” Ben replied.
             
“From me?” Marian laughed.
             
“From you,” Ben said. “Just ask Bubbe,” he added without thinking, and he looked immediately sorry.
             
“
Chutzpah
?” Johanna shouted, apparently liking the feel of the word in her mouth. “I thought
chutzpah
was a Jewish thing.”
             
“You can be Catholic and have
chutzpah
,” Ben told her. “You can be anybody. And children should be seen and not heard. Go on ahead now, but slowly.”
             
Marian studied Ben in his embarrassment, the way he scrunched up his nose, the way he shuffled along, a cigarette hanging from his soft wide mouth, the way his squinting eyes talked to hers. She reminded herself that he’d been full of
chutzpah
, too—at the start. She took his arm as Johanna hopscotched ahead on their quiet street of red and brown brick homes, the smell of lilacs beckoning as she admired the plants lounging beside private iron gates.
             
“You look like one of them stewardesses,” Ben muttered. He lit another cigarette and gave her the look.
             
“You’re no Humphrey Bogart,” she said, tossing back her blonde wavy head.
             
“You’re better than Bacall, baby,” he said and she laughed.
             
They approached their neighbor Mrs. O’Rourke, with her stingy, strict face, and Marian thought what a pity she is so tight, her brown hair cut short above her heart-shaped face. And she’s no Twiggy, either, not in those drab clothes. “A bit Mary Hick, she is,” Marian whispered into his ear.
             
“Shh,” Ben whispered back. “I know a few things.”
             
Mrs. O’Rourke turned toward them, and they all nodded their unspoken hello.
             
“Mr. O’Rourke missed work again, poor man,” Marian said when she was sure they were out of earshot. “And Mrs. O’Rourke never looks happy. She’s completely fixed in her ways: nine o’clock Mass every morning, the grocers on Tuesdays, the fish market on Fridays, His Drunken Highness on Saturday afternoons. Even their lovely twins don’t seem to brighten her pinched face.”
             
“Marian, I heard yelling a few weeks ago and went outside to see them sitting on their stoop. Mr. O’Rourke explained that his first wife died in childbirth in Cork, giving birth to Anna and Rona. Nine years ago, he was alone until your Mary Hick,” he whispered, “Barbara Koliknova, his first wife’s sister, left Poland. Sacrificed her own future to raise the girls.”
             
“I didn’t know,” Marian said. It occurred to her that the woman was too sad to smile.
             
“Always give people the benefit of the doubt,” Ben said.
             
“Thank you, Mr. Reporter.” Marian rolled her eyes.
             
“Ma?” Johanna took her hand.
             
“Yes, love?”
             
“Can you come pick me up the next time alone?” Jo pulled her down close and whispered, “Promise next time can be between us?”
             
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time, okay?”
             
Marian eked out a smile as Jo tiptoed towards Anna and Rona, and then the three girls raced into the O’Rourke’s backyard.
             
Ben touched Marian’s waist, and then moved his hand lower on her hip as they stood on the front steps to their glossy blue door and watched Mrs. O’Rourke pick up her garden shears and go inside. Marian took a cigarette from Ben’s shirt pocket as they ducked into the house and leaned against the oak-stained door closing it behind them.
             
Ben pressed his body close in to hers and lit her cigarette. She exhaled as he loosened the white sash around her rayon shirtdress and let it fall to the floor. Moving with him to the drawing room beyond the front hall she quickly extinguished the fag, and together they walked clumsily, arms entwined, up the wide oak stairs. Resting against the stair-landing window, they kissed and kissed and then kissed some more. Marian glanced out the small window to see Mrs. O’Rourke cleaning her kitchen before they fled up the rest of the stairs to their bedroom. Through their open window they could hear the music of the girls’ high, pretty voices. Marian kicked a copy of
Ulysses
under the bed and out of the way.
             
“Your ma’d have your head for that smut,” he said.
             
“That’s why it’s kept under the bed,” she said, falling onto the patchwork eiderdown.
             
“Ah,” he said. “We’ll have to keep th
e smut from the kids as well.”
He looked through the window, making sure Johanna was still outside in their neighbor’s yard. “Another child would be welcome, no?” he said and held her. She looked away, not willing to talk about that again right now.
             
They made love quickly, before he had the buttons of her dress undone, though Marian sensed that Johanna’s nearness was just the excuse for its brevity. Once, she had asked Ben if he thought she was a disappointment. Of course not, he had said, ever the one in the dark.
             
She breathed in the lilac scent from the fresh cuttings on their consignment sale bureau, and Ben lit a cigarette. Cool air flowed in as she lay there, and with it the earthy smell of newly-turned soil. She pulled herself together knowing she had to make something for dinner, not having had the time to make it to the market because of the day’s detour. She considered Ben during his office hours, having coffee with someone or other and she suddenly resented him his busy workday away from all the boredom. But there was something more there, too. Oddly, it was the inner calm he exuded that annoyed her more than anything else. He was too focused for a wandering mind like hers, which always led to some level of discontent. She picked up his notepad from the nightstand, read something scribbled about lung cancer and its possible connection to cigarette smoking, and turned to gaze at the pale chipped ceiling.
             
“How’s my favorite journalist?” she said after a moment.
             
He squinted at her, and she smiled.
Stay afloat, my Ben, she
wanted to say with that smile. He would move on, keep trying to fix the world, while she lay there struggling, and now she felt the old undertow dragging her down.
Don’t let me pull you down,
she thought, getting up to wash her face before heading back downstairs to start the evening meal.

As nice as it was to walk, it was equally nice Ben decided to take the bus more often and leave Marian with the car. Brand new last year, it did attract attention. She had Mrs. Brady over for lunch in the spring, and a few of the other neighbors along, too. It occurred to Marian that they were all quite jovial and that maybe her perceptions were off. Some in the neighborhood might have seen her as the unfriendly one. Maybe we reflect who we are in others, after all they had accepted her invitation. On the way into the house, everyone had
oohed
and
aahed
and patted the swanky lime-green Ford Cortina with the black top in the same way that they used to
ooh
and
aah
and pat their babies’ heads.
             
This afternoon, the geeky mothers from the neighborhood were having coffee at an outside table at Furlong’s and pretended not to notice her when she drove past on the way to Johanna’s school. They didn’t return Marian’s waving hand. She drove on wondering why they were so insular. Never enough chitchat for these boring women. Nothing better to do than gossip. Well, with the good ones come the bad apples; she shrugged them off and turned up “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio as she waited for Johanna in the pickup zone at Muckross School.
             
Although she enjoyed the car, she looked forward to next fall when Johanna would walk back and forth to school with her chums. It was a godsend when Jo finally loped over to the car and got in, too exhausted from her day for much else. Join the crowd, Marian wanted to say.
Not easy trying to fit in, is it? Not easy trying our best. That never changes,
she would tell her, when she was older.
             
“I’m hungry,” Johanna said as if exhaling her last breath, practically horizontal across the passenger seat.
             
“There’s a meatloaf, and I’ll give you twopence for a flake bar.” Marian lowered the music and kissed Johanna on the forehead, looked into her daughter’s vivacious eyes. Jo let out a smile. Funny how children need that attentive look so they know that they are being heard. It was the devoted smile she used when she kissed her daughter goodnight. Those were the times Johanna would tell her something private, something that was bothering her. It was always after reading to her but before lights out, when she would sit on Jo’s bed and massage her lanky shoulders, that Johanna would open up.
             
She rummaged through her purse for the coin and placed it in her hand. 
             
“Why don’t we have a holy water font by the front door? Anne-Marie does. Gran does,” Jo said.
             
“Because I don’t like plastic holy water fonts. You can bless yourself at church,” Marian answered, pulling out of the school’s driveway.
             
“But when are we going to church? Anne-Marie says she goes every Saturday to confession. The whole parish does, she said, except for us. Her ma told her we’re lapsted.”
             
“Lapsed. And we’re nothing of the kind. You want to go to confession every Saturday? I’ll take you to confession. We’ll go to the eleven. Father Riordan’s in charge and he’s decent. Says mass like a speed reader,” she said. “Under twelve minutes from beginning to end.”
             
“Da should come with us again,” Jo said.
             
“I think he should wait a bit.”
             
Marian remembered Father Riordan’s face on that Sunday when she’d brought Ben and all three of them had talked in the rectory after Mass. Ben had said that he’d been curious about the Apostle’s Creed. He’d seriously wanted to know, where in the Holy Land was Pointus Pilate. He was fascinated because he had never heard that town mentioned as a destination in Israel. Father Riordan had excused himself, and Marian had laughed until she’d cried, giving Ben a look as if he should burn up. He was a Roman governor, not a place, Marian had explained on the way home, and Ben had been mortified by his ignorance. Such a
kappore.
A faux pas, he explained when Marian’s face became puzzled. She gave him a playful shove.
             
“Anne-Marie said she can’t come to my birthday party,” Jo continued. Marian wondered if the two points—going to church and to birthday parties—were related.
             
“So you’ll invite someone else,” Marian said and began the slow search for a parking spot close to their brownstone. “Go on. Put on your Mickey Mouse Club cap.”
             
Johanna jumped around with her black ears on. “Bubbe said that she would introduce me to Jewish kids from her neighborhood. She told me being half-Jewish is better than nothing.”
             
Ever since Ben started taking Jo to see his mother, all Marian heard was Bubbe said this and Bubbe said that.
Bubbe said a lot of things she shouldn’t have,
Marian wanted to say but she kept the McKeever in her down. “No matter who comes to your party, you’ll get lots of presents.”
             
“I don’t care about presents, Ma. I’ve got my cap, and that’s all I want. Margaret’s ma says there’s lots of kids without all what we have and being grateful just to have a Ma who’ll–”
             
“You get lots of attention, Jo. You know that,” Marian said, opening her eyes wide at her.
             
It was then that Marian noticed a peculiar woman wearing a nurse’s hat and white shoes, prowling around like a rabid rodent, entering their front gate. Marian pressed the brake, thrusting Jo against the back-seat cushion. The clumsy trespasser hit the door-knocker once, leaning forward to peer through the bay window. The strange-looking person’s head moved in small jerks.
             
“Who is that?” Jo asked.
             
Marian backed up.
             
“No parking, Jo. We’ll have to go round again,” she said, reversing carefully to the corner and then making the swift right.
             
“There is someone at our door, Ma. God, don’t you ever listen to me?” Jo said. “Look.”
             
Marian glanced and then made the turn, parked on a side street and sat in the car rummaging intently through her handbag for a minute or two before turning off the engine. Johanna huffed out of the car.
             
“Get back here, girl,” Marian hissed. “Take your book satchel, my friend, before you skeddadle. And your dirty runners.”
             
Marian got out of the car and looked around the corner, thankful that the strange woman had run off. She hurried to get to the letterbox before Jo could grab at the note stuck inside. Marian smashed the envelope into her coat pocket.
             
“Who was it, Ma?” Jo asked again as she trudged up the stairs to the front door.
             
“Oh, nobody,” she said. “Nobody important. Go on in, Johanna. Go upstairs and wash up before you start your homework.”
             
Marian walked mechanically into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and took out the string beans, placed them on the cutting board, began chopping off the ends. She listened to Jo thump upstairs and a whirlwind of anxiety blew through her. She filled the large pot with water and garlic cloves, watched the skinny beans twirling around. She had been a bad girl with unbridled thoughts and actions. She had not been able to control her desires and now she was paying. They would all pay, and she felt real fear course through her body. Had she really thought she could keep her secret forever? Maybe she could, still, maybe she could make this incident go away. She took the horrible crumpled paper from her overcoat and stuffed it into her apron, wiped the counters clean with ammonia spray before she would continue her cooking. Her mouth felt dry, and she took a glass of water from the tap. She meandered into the dining room and studied Johanna who was memorizing her Latin verbs. She was suddenly aware of her daughter’s preciousness, the fragility of her thin young limbs. Everything in the dining room seemed fragile, too. The curvy legs of the wooden dining table, the hand-painted vase on the end table in the adjoining drawing room ready to crash into bits by a mere brush past it. The peony plates looked woozy behind the glass of the bureau; the second-hand oak bureau itself looked weary as if it might collapse. Johanna’s forefinger and thumb squeezed her thin yellow pencil with an intensity that suggested that it, too, might break.
             
Why was Nurse barging back into her life after all these years? Marian believed she had wiped clean that part of her life a long time ago. Swept up the young Marian and thrown her away like a dirty, unwanted rag, never to be thought about again. How dare Nurse violate her family’s right to privacy. From what she’d glimpsed of the poor creature, nothing much had changed for her. She recognized the erratic movement of Nurse’s muddy eyes, eyes that had frightened her then and frightened her now again. Was this visit simply a cry for help from a pitiful person? Whatever had prompted such unbalanced behavior, she couldn’t let Nurse in. Nurse had to remain in the past.
             
Marian smoothed back Jo’s dark hair, gathered it in a proper ponytail and out of her eyes. She left her alone to do her lessons, walked through the swinging white door and into the kitchen. No need to dredge up the sins of her youth; she had moved on, she told herself. Still, she found herself unraveling the note.